gallivanting around tokyo

after a very nice long rest, trying to navigate my room with my huge suitcases taking up all the space, figuring out the japanese shower, and having a kit-kat bar for breakfast, the girls and i decided to explore asukasa and get real breakfast. so we crossed the river and found a konbini (convenience store) and dug up some grub! finding food in japan is kind of hard when you have no idea what anything tastes like. so i went out on a limb and got a juice-box looking thing with a picture of a strawberry on it and a little pastry that looked like some long waffles. it wasn't until after i left the store and sat down to eat that i realized that the packages had english written on them too (facepalm). it turns out that i had purchased a strawberry yogurt drink that had a sweet retractable straw(quite tasty, but with an unexpected twang) and...cheese dogs. yes. that's what was written on the package. doh! luckily it was cream cheese and not something nasty. and thankfully, it was also quite yummy, except rich.

after stuffing our faces, we walked back to sensoji temple and did some more exploring. the temple was waaay more crowded during the day then it was the night before. so we had some fun navigating alleyways and other streets. at least, they looked like alleyways...everything is so narrow here that it was probably just another street. it was walking through the streets of asakusa that i noticed a really odd fad. there were some people that had strollers that did not have babies in them...but dogs. mostly the long-haired dachshunds. and that is odd in and of itself, but the dogs were also dressed up. one poor little puppy was outfitted in elaborate cowboy duds while another was wearing puppy-sized sunglasses and a geisha wig. we also saw someone walking a whole troop of puppies that were all wearing traditional kimonos. i wish i had gotten pictures, but they were all walking too quickly. speaking of pictures, i noticed at least two people taking pictures of us while we were walking through the streets. not to mention all the staring. i didn't expect that in tokyo, where gaijins are abundant. it makes me really nervous for when i travel to the city i'm staying in, which is reported to be a nice, quiet suburban town. hoooo boy.

during our exploration of asakusa, we stepped into an arcade that had the weirdest claw machine prizes i had ever seen. one of them was filled with multi-colored plushies that basically looked like stick men...except they were covered in embroidered blood. weird. and we walked past one that had these huge gallon-cartons that were full of coffee beans. there was a young man who was actually trying to win one of them. we didn't stay there very long.

after we had our fill of walking, we went back to our hotel where we met up with ryan again to tour more of tokyo. however...more on that later. we're going back to sensoji temple for more festival! i'm going to get me a chocolate banana and a crepe. :) and definitely more peach juice. LOVE that stuff. ja ne!